


In Memoriam

by palmtreelights



Category: Power Rangers, Power Rangers in Space
Genre: Ancestor Veneration, Cultural Differences, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Traditions, post-Countdown to Destruction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-01
Updated: 2015-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-26 16:01:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3856573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palmtreelights/pseuds/palmtreelights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Andros?"</p><p>"Yes?"</p><p>"What do people on our planet do for the dead?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Memoriam

**Author's Note:**

> Acknowledgements: S, for everything: If I outlive you, I will honor you as though we were blood relatives. If you outlive me, I'll whisper our in-jokes to you so you'll smile even when you're sad. Everyone who has ever written about death and its close subjects: for preserving that wealth of knowledge.

"Andros?"

Cassie has to call to him another few times before it registers that she is in the hall with him, standing just a few feet away, and that she, like the rest of the world, is not stopping for anyone. For all the destruction Angel Grove has just seen, its people are moving, salvaging, rebuilding.

"Yes?" he asks, tearing his gaze from the door after a few more seconds.

She approaches, tentative, and nods toward the door. "How's she doing?"

Taking a slow, deep breath, he shrugs. "I don't know. I don't want to bother her. She said she wants to be alone." Her face, paler and more ashen than when she'd been taken again by Dark Specter, still haunts him. Staying out here is the farthest from Karone he can stand to be right now, but even if he were right next to her, she wouldn't be there. She'd be lost, remembering the only father figure she's ever known, and stumbling over the fact of his demise.

A delicate, crystalline sound draws his attention back to Cassie, in whose hand is its source, a lidded ceramic pot.

Following his gaze, she says, "Could you show me where you last fought Ecliptor? I think I know a way to help your sister through this a little. Maybe. I'm not sure, but it's worth a try."

All at once, he understands. He nods, motions down the hall, and starts walking. Maybe this will help him, too.

  


* * *

  


"Are you sure you don't want to do this by yourself?" asks Cassie, her fingers shifting over the lidded pot.

When Karone had betrayed Dark Specter, the first person to offer her their friendship was Cassie; and now, in the aftermath of the decisive battle, again it is Cassie whose concern for her goes beyond what Andros expects.

He nods. "I'm sure."

In the room, Karone lies in bed, wrapped in purple sheets, eyes red and puffy. Andros suppresses the urge to sit with her, forcing himself to give her space and some measure of distance from other living beings. He remembers grief, after all. He remembers feeling caught between worlds and falling as silent as stone because nothing meant anything in the face of so much loss.

At least he'd had hope. She doesn't. In those awful minutes between her falling in their last fight and coming back to life amid sunlight and rubble, he glimpsed the despair that has stolen her vitality.

There is no way he could do this by himself, knowing the weight of what's upon her.

"Hey," he says quietly. Pausing, he clears his throat. "Cassie has something she wants to show you."

Karone doesn't move. Andros exchanges a glance with Cassie, nodding.

"There are lots of customs here on Earth," Cassie begins, taking a step forward, "for when loved ones die. One is cremation. We burn the body and collect the ashes. Some people scatter them somewhere important to the person. Some people keep the ashes in their honor." Holding up the lidded pot, she continues, "I don't know what people do on KO-35, but... I got Ecliptor's ashes -- his sand. I gathered his sand for you."

Now, Karone seems to wake. She sits up, first propped on one elbow as she stares at the lidded pot, then completely as everything comes together, Cassie's words, the nondescript pot Cassie holds with such care. Her eyes ask a thousand questions, but none of them makes it into the room, her mouth half open from the attempt.

With a glance at Andros, Cassie crosses the rest of the room and holds the lidded pot out to Karone, who reaches out and touches the lid as if that slight pressure alone will break it.

Maybe they were wrong, Andros thinks as he watches a tear slide down his sister's cheek. Maybe this has made it all too real, too final. Maybe he shouldn't have shattered Zordon's tube. Maybe the power of good was wrong about this.

Her eyes glistening, Karone draws back her hand. "Thank you," she says, voice brittle and thin.

"I'll put it here," says Cassie, walking past Andros to set it on the table by the window. She comes to stand by Andros as Karone nods.

"Would you like me to get you anything?" he asks, feeling as out of place as his question sounds. The mundane seems so foreign here, in the battle-scarred Megaship, in rubble-strewn downtown Angel Grove, in the weary hearts of the warriors who fought for good and the girl whose life has only just been returned to her.

Biting her lips, Karone shakes her head.

Andros nods, offering softly, "I'll come by again later." Even if all they do is sit in silence, he'll come back. They've spent enough time apart, lost enough to forces greater than them. She will not lose him, too.

"Okay," she says, and she lies back down, and a shadow falls over her again.

In the hallway, the air is lighter. Andros sighs once the door shuts behind them.

"What _do_ people do for the dead on your planet?" asks Cassie.

"All sorts of things. It's like Earth. You can't always make a blanket statement."

"I'm glad it's not like birthdays."

"How do you mean?"

Sighing, Cassie folds her arms and looks up, as if she can see through the ship and to the sky. "It's not a huge deal when someone forgets your birthday. It hurts, but life goes on, you still enjoy it. But death is so much heavier. People write songs and poems and books about losing loved ones. It's... How can you just ignore death? How could anyone?" Meeting his gaze, she shrugs. "I'd try to understand it if someone doesn't do something, but I think, deep down, I wouldn't ever get it."

"You know," he says, "I don't think I would, either."

  


* * *

  


Hours later, when night has fallen outside and the first day's clean-up efforts have ended, Andros heads to see Karone with dinner. He finds her sitting in bed, her back straight, her gaze steady on the lidded pot that still sits where Cassie had placed it earlier.

It's a start.

"It's just soup," he tells her, setting the tray on the nightstand. "And some water."

"I'm not hungry," she says.

Another good sign, Andros thinks. Her voice is clearer than before. Maybe Cassie was right after all.

"I'll just leave it here."

"Okay."

He takes a step toward her, then stops, uncertain. Her tone was not dismissive, but perhaps he is intruding. Whatever she has thought or done between when he and Cassie left and now, it has brought Karone away from the shadows of despair. She is responsive, and that gives him hope. If she needs to be alone to process everything, then he will leave her be.

"Andros?"

"Yes?"

Karone stands, slow and graceful, her posture befitting the queen she was raised to be. She heads for the lidded pot, tracing its surface with her fingertips. "What do people on our planet do for the dead?"

The answer he gave Cassie earlier won't be enough now, but for Karone, he is willing to share more, to give her the pieces of their home world that are hers by right.

Going to stand beside her, he watches her hand move against the smooth, gleaming ceramic. "Prayers, or chants, or long or short services. Some people are buried, some are cremated, some are preserved. Pets, too, sometimes."

"So many customs?"

"Yes. It varies from place to place, sometimes from family to family."

Drawing a shaky breath, she asks, "What did our family do?"

Lifting his gaze to her eyes, he says, "I can show you."

She pulls back her hand and meets his gaze, searching his face for sincerity, for proof that he can make good on this offer.

"Come on," he tells her, taking her hand and leading her away.

It is silent in the hallway. The others must be sleeping, exhausted from a long day of saving the world and helping with the clean-up efforts. He should be in bed, too, but he is too awake now, happy that Karone seems so much better, that he can do something for her.

In his room, the tide of glowing warmth inside him ebbs. For those first few seconds after the door has closed, he breathes, grounding himself. Nodding to the nightstand, he says, "We use pictures. That's you and me as kids."

"From our lockets," she adds.

He nods. "I kept those the entire time I was looking for you. They reminded me of why I had to keep going. Whenever I lost hope, I looked at your picture, and I knew I couldn't stop searching."

Shaking her head, she approaches the photos. "But I didn't die that day."

"But you were gone, and no one knew where to. Some people even said you _had_ died, especially as time went by. Look."

He goes to the dresser and pulls open a drawer, where a box sits cushioned in extra red sheets. Reverently, he lifts it from its little nest and sets it atop the dresser's bare surface, aware that his sister is watching his every move. He removes the lid and steps aside, gesturing for Karone to come and see.

Her careful stride betrays the awe that has overcome her, either because she has picked up on it from how he handled the box, or because she knows that its contents are a treasure. She glances at him, and he nods.

She touches the jewelry arranged in neat lines along the edges of the box's velvet lining, necklaces and bracelets and rings arranged around a framed picture of a man and a woman in formal dress.

"Those are our parents," he says as she picks up the picture. "I don't know if they're alive, but even so, the point is to remember them, to keep them with me somehow. The jewelry is theirs, too."

"I don't understand."

"You kept your locket, didn't you?"

Looking up at him, she says, "I thought you were dead."

"Why did you keep it?"

She looks at the picture again, shrugging. "I don't know. To feel like you were still with me, I guess. To remind me why I was fighting. Why I _thought_ I was fighting."

"This," he says, pointing to the picture, "makes me feel less alone. All of these things, they're not just _things_. They keep our connection with our ancestors alive. Mom kept a picture of her great grandparents in a fancy wooden box on a shelf in the kitchen. Every day, she asked them to help her make our house as happy as theirs."

Turning the frame over in her hands, she frowns. Andros lets her silence fill the room, averting his gaze for a few seconds, the only bit of privacy he can give her as they stand side by side. When he looks back, her eyes appear glassy, the only indication that she is not as composed as her stance lets on.

"I don't have any pictures of Ecliptor," she says as she places the photo back in the box, her voice steady but thin.

"No," he agrees, "but you have his sand."

  


* * *

  


They stand before the lidded pot, hands flat against their middle, left over right. It isn't much, in the way of ritual, but it's the best Andros can think to give right now.

"Thank you for protecting my sister," he says, voice low. It doesn't matter anymore to him that Ecliptor tried to kill him and the others. Somehow, despite the more sinister purpose of his existence, Ecliptor had developed true affection for the girl he lived to serve, and Andros will forever owe him gratitude for being kind to her where anyone else would have shown her only cruelty. "Please continue to protect her."

The silence that follows is long, but not uncomfortable. He keeps his eyes on the lidded pot, the focus of their devotion. The sorrow he feels now is for how this has hurt Karone, but the minimalistic ceremony gives him closure, too. He'd never thought of it until now, but in his own way, he needs to bid Ecliptor farewell and cease to think of him as an enemy. The time for such sharp divisions is over. All he wants is for everyone to be safe.

Some moments later, Karone takes her turn. "Thank you-- for everything." She pauses, and when she continues, her voice is thick with tears. "For being my father when I had no one. For caring about me. For risking your life for me so many times."

Out of the corner of his eye, Andros sees her shoulders shake.

"I have nothing to ask you for. You've already given me everything."

For a split second, he thinks she is going to collapse, and then, with a single breath, she stands tall, squares her shoulders, lifts her chin. Always, she keeps her hands how Andros taught her.

One day he'll ask her if Ecliptor was the one who showed her how to walk like the world is hers and to act like nothing could possibly touch her. He imagines it must have been, and that assuming that stance now is an offering to his memory.

For now, though, he gives her this moment, this bridge between her old life and her new one, and all it means.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm fascinated by ancestor veneration; secular and religious rituals, customs, and traditions relating to death; and what all of those things tell us about the people who practice or practiced them. I think about religion and spirituality a LOT, in the context of both real life and fiction, so naturally I have a ton of ideas about those subjects in the PR universe. Anyway, I didn't want to make Karovan culture a uniform thing because, what general statements can we make about Earth? What would "Earth culture" be or mean if we were faced with beings from other planets or worlds? I don't know or pretend to know.
> 
> Going into this, I didn't know exactly what I'd end up with, but I feel like ancestor veneration that looks something kind of like this might be really important to people who leave behind an entire planet to start anew, whether for science or adventure. (And if you look up "Sumerian votive statues," you'll get a visual of what inspired the specifics of the little ritual in the last scene.) I think they'd want to keep those memories of their roots and identity alive and preserved, and I would imagine that, in a universe where magic and ghosts and interdimensional travel exist, prayers or petitions to the dead would be a thing, too. Maybe some families incorporate candles or incense, maybe they build more elaborate altars or shrines. Maybe they carry an heirloom around all the time as an amulet. There's just so much there.
> 
> I could go on forever! But in any case, that's some of my thought process on this. Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed.


End file.
